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      Lincoln Center Revives Summer for the City, Hoping to Draw New Fans

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      The festival will include hip-hop, Korean arts, Mostly Mozart and a flock of 200 flamingo lawn ornaments.Lincoln Center will bring back its Summer for the City festival this year, the organization announced on Monday, continuing its efforts to attract new audiences by embracing a wide variety of genres, including pop and classical music, social dance and comedy.There will be a weeklong celebration of hip-hop, performances by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and a Korean cultural festival. A flock of 200 neon-pink flamingo lawn ornaments will adorn a pool near David Geffen Hall, part of a reimagining of the center’s outdoor spaces by the Broadway costume and set designer Clint Ramos.“The hope is to transform the campus — to upend people’s expectations of what Lincoln Center is,” Shanta Thake, the center’s chief artistic officer, said in an interview. “To allow people to just come and play and understand that this isn’t a precious palace on a hill, but a place to inspire joy.”Under Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, the organization has worked in recent years to appeal to a younger, more diverse crowd. Its efforts have led to some grumbling among fans of more traditional genres, who say the center is not doing enough to promote classical music. Some elements of the Mostly Mozart rubric have been reduced in recent years, including guest ensembles, intimate recitals and performances of new music that flows out of the classical tradition.The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will perform 13 concerts over three weeks, beginning with a program on July 22 that features Mozart’s Concerto No. 2 for Flute, with the soloist Jasmine Choi, as well as the Korean folk song “Arirang” and Soo Yeon Lyuh’s “Dudurim.” The performance is also part of Korean Arts Week, which includes K-pop bands, DJs and a film festival.It will be Mostly Mozart’s last season with Louis Langrée, who has been the ensemble’s music director since 2002. His contract expires this year.Thake said that Mostly Mozart would maintain a presence after Langrée’s exit. She said that the center was in talks with the orchestra about future seasons, and that they were discussing how Mostly Mozart “fits within the values of Lincoln Center,” including efforts to reach new audiences and promote inclusivity.“There’s no doubt that the orchestra will maintain a central place in our programming going forward,” she said.Hip-hop will be front and center as part of a celebration of its 50th anniversary, with performances by J.Period, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane.An opera based on Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower,” by the folk and blues musician Toshi Reagon and the composer Bernice Johnson Reagon, will get its New York City premiere at Geffen Hall on July 14.Social dance returns on June 14 with a performance of Cuban music by the singer Lucrecia and the salsa band 8 Y Más. The giant disco ball that hung over the main plaza last year, also designed by Ramos, will be back too.More than 300,000 people attended last year’s festival, which aimed at helping New York City heal after the upheaval brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. More than three-quarters of them had never before bought a ticket to a Lincoln Center offering, according to the center.Thake said she was not overly concerned about skeptics who worry that the center’s identity has changed too much.“To those people I say, It’s wonderful that you have found a home at Lincoln Center and what a gift it has been that Lincoln Center has been a home for so many for so long,” she said. “All that we are doing right now is opening up that invitation. And really having many, many more New Yorkers be able to say the exact same thing. That’s a real gift, and something that not only we can do, but something that we really have to do.” More

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      The Buggles’ Song Launched MTV. After 45 Years, They’re Going on Tour.

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      Trevor Horn, half of the group behind “Video Killed the Radio Star” and a producer who helped engineer the sound of the ’80s, will be the opening act for Seal.In the late 1970s, when Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes were trying to get a record deal as the Buggles, a lot of people in the music business were confused. What kind of band has only a singing bassist and a keyboard player?“We were like, ‘We don’t want a guitar player, and we use a drum machine,’” Horn recalled recently during a video interview from his Los Angeles home. “There was a lot of suspicion about that. We were a bit ahead of our time.”Horn, 73, was being a bit modest; he’s routinely described as “the man who invented the ’80s.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was a global hit and ushered in a new era of opulent electronic pop. The video was the first ever played on MTV when it launched in 1981, and featured Horn and Downes in outrageous silver suits and deadpan looks.By then, they’d already moved on from the Buggles by joining Yes, briefly. Downes went on to play with the pomp-rock group Asia, and Horn entombed himself in a recording studio, waging war on boring music.As a producer and head of his own record label, ZTT, Horn worked on some of the most audacious albums of an over-excited decade: ABC’s “The Lexicon of Love,” Malcolm McLaren’s “Duck Rock,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome.” If you hate the ’80s, he’s your villain.A Trevor Horn production has clever lyrics, fortified hooks, an episodic structure and a dramatic fire-walling of frequencies that makes the music pop out of speakers. He also worked with Spandau Ballet, Grace Jones (“Slave to the Rhythm”), Seal (“Crazy”), the Pet Shop Boys, t.A.T.u., John Legend, Paul McCartney and Rod Stewart.The Buggles never toured, apart from a 2010 reunion gig for charity, but they’re the opening act on the British singer Seal’s upcoming tour, which starts April 25 in Phoenix. Horn will be playing without Downes, whose obligations to Yes got in the way.“My daughter, who is a music business lawyer, keeps saying, ‘You’ve got to change the name, because there’s only one of you. It should be called the Buggle,’” Horn explained with a laugh. His daughter also insisted Horn wear a certain iconic garment. “She said, ‘If I was a paying customer and the Buggle didn’t have his silver jacket on, I’d want my money back.’”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Geoff Downes, left, and Horn. “Video Killed the Radio Star” was a global hit and ushered in a new era of opulent electronic pop. Fin Costello/Redferns, via Getty ImagesYou worked as a producer for five years before you had your first hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” After such a long wait, why did you walk away from pop stardom?My first experience of being a pop star was pretty grim. I was miming to “Video Killed the Radio Star” on every TV show known to man. When you’ve made a living as a musician, miming is the most boring thing you could possibly do. I knew that in order to come from nowhere and have a hit record, we’d need to have a pretty catchy track. But that doesn’t necessarily make for a career.“Video Killed the Radio Star” isn’t just catchy, it’s annoyingly, almost obnoxiously catchy. Was that part of the plan?[Laughs] I know what you’re referring to. Bruce Woolley [who helped write the song] and Tina Charles, a well-known singer in England, were singing the chorus, and it sounded bland. I said, “Why don’t you sing it in American and exaggerate it?” That was effective. I was aware that it might be a bit annoying, but I thought it was the kind of thing you wouldn’t forget.One of your early jobs was a progress chaser in a plastic bag factory. What does a progress chaser do?People would call and say, “This is the British Sugar Corporation. We ordered 20,000 plastic bags that were meant to arrive last week. Could you tell us where they are?” I’d go down to the factory to see the head of production, and ask where the bags were. And he would say, “[Expletive] off!” Then I’d go back to the British Sugar Corporation and say, “I’m assured the bags will be there on Wednesday.”Did that job influence your idea that we were living in “The Age of Plastic,” which is the name of the Buggles’ 1980 album?To some degree, but that was mostly me being irritated by people saying, “Eh, your music sounds a bit plastic.” After a while, I thought, “[Expletive] them! It’s the plastic age!”When a couple of my friends heard “Video Killed the Radio Star,” they said, “It’s got absolutely no integrity.” I suppose I was thumbing my nose a bit at the ’70s idea of integrity.Aside from the musical and technical aspects of being a producer, how important is the psychological aspect — knowing when to cajole or when to flatter?All of that is very important. Even though you think you can say whatever you want, because you’re in charge, you can’t. The only way that works is patience and kindness. Most people that are successful have well-developed instincts for what suits them, and if you’re going to take them out of their comfort zone, you’ve got to be careful.Paul McCartney certainly has well-developed instincts. Did you find him amenable to your suggestions when you worked with him on “Figure of Eight” in 1989?Paul is very charming. The first time I met him, I was playing Space Invaders and he came up behind me and said, “Do you want me to show you how to cheat the machine, Trev?” You think, “Jeez, Paul McCartney knows my name!” Even I got a bit excited by that. But when it comes down to it, he’s still only a songwriter and a bass player. It’s not like he’s the dictator of a country and he can get you locked up.When you started working with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, they said they wanted to sound like a cross between Kiss and Donna Summer. How important is it to get direction from the artist?Oh, it’s vital. ABC wanted to be like Chic, a big dance act, but with better lyrics. With Frankie Goes to Hollywood, I was intrigued by the idea of a rock-dance record. I was playing bass for a living in 1977 when Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” came out, so I heard it every night. It was the first mechanical record that I heard, and I was fascinated by it.And when I heard Kraftwerk’s “Man-Machine,” it was a revelation — the idea that you could make a record without having a group there, with all their problems. I felt like that was the way forward. You could make music all by yourself, because of the new technology.Downes (left) and Horn (at microphone) performing with Yes in 1980. Michael Putland/Getty Images“Owner of a Lonely Heart,” Yes’s big hit off “90125,” was its first No. 1 pop hit. How did you get the band to record a song it hated?I had to go down on my knees and beg. I said, “I’m a really hot producer at the moment, probably the hottest producer in the world, and if you don’t do this song, you’ll make me a failure. You promised me you’d do this song, so you’ve got to do it.” I was being funny, but not funny, if you know what I mean. I was desperate.Some people who’ve worked with you describe you as “obsessive.” Was it obsessive to spend three months working on Seal’s hit “Crazy”?It was obsessive. I’d never heard a song quite like “Crazy” before, so it took a while to figure out how to do it properly. I’m not trying to get a record perfect, I just want it to have an emotional impact. That’s what takes time.You didn’t have a hit until you were 30 years old, which is unusual. Were you thinking for years that any day now, you’d be a star?People would tell me, “You think that’s going to happen? Look at you! You’re not even that great-looking!” My parents kept trying to get me to go to teacher’s training college. It didn’t look very promising, put it that way.I remember a girl saying to me, “You’re 28. You’re driving around in a beaten-up old car, living hand-to-mouth. What are you doing with your life?” And I said, “I’m pulling the handle of a big slot machine, and I’m going to keep pulling it, because it’s going to pay the jackpot out soon. That’s why I’ve got a rubbish car.” More

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      Frank Ocean Headlines Coachella and Plays Reworked Songs

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      During his first large-scale performance in years, the enigmatic singer suggested a new album was coming, just “not right now.”Three years after a much-hyped headlining set was foiled by the pandemic — and nearly six years since his most recent large-scale concerts — the venerated but rarely heard from singer-songwriter Frank Ocean closed the opening weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday with a typically emotional performance of reworked favorites, and a hint that a new album was coming.Wearing a bright blue jacket with the hood pulled tight around his face, Ocean took to the stage around an hour late, beginning with a rock version of “Novacane,” his 2011 debut single that describes meeting a girl at Coachella, before playing reworked versions of hits including “Bad Religion” and “White Ferrari.”Soon, he walked to the front of the stage — beneath vast screens — and explained he was performing on Sunday because he used to regularly attend the desert festival with his younger brother, Ryan Breaux, who died in a car crash in 2020. Ocean said one of his “fondest memories” was dancing with his brother in a tent there to the rap duo Rae Sremmurd.“I know he would have been so excited to be here with all of us,” Ocean added.Ocean, 35, has not released an album since 2016, with minimal public appearances, only a few singles and a luxury fashion line in between. At times on Sunday, he was barely visible to the crowd despite the large screens, as his hourlong set — which included a DJ interlude from the Paris-based producer Crystallmess — rounded out the festival weekend’s headline performances, following the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny on Friday and the K-pop girl group Blackpink on Saturday.Ocean’s stage time was perhaps meant to be longer. But after playing “At Your Best (You Are Love),” his version of an Isley Brothers track once covered by Aaliyah, Ocean announced: “Guys I’m being told it’s curfew, so that’s the end of the show.”The festival — one of the pre-eminent events in the pop music calendar, with some 125,000 daily attendees, regardless of who’s booked onstage — was held once again at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., its home nearly every year since 1999, and also livestreamed via YouTube. Other performers across the three days included Rosalía, Burna Boy, Gorillaz, Blondie (with Nile Rodgers), boygenius and the rap producer Metro Boomin, with special guests Future and the Weeknd.Coachella’s other headliners this year included the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny and the K-pop girl group Blackpink.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images For CoachellaOcean had initially been slated to headline in April 2020, before Coachella was postponed and then canceled twice because of Covid-19; the festival returned last year without Ocean, featuring the headliners Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Swedish House Mafia instead. Coachella repeats for its second annual weekend from Friday to Sunday.Given those canceled appearances, Ocean’s set on Sunday was highly anticipated, even by those unable to get tickets. Most of the festival was livestreamed on YouTube throughout the weekend and thousands of music lovers waited online Sunday to watch Ocean’s set, too. But YouTube said in a tweet late Sunday that the livestream of his concert would not go ahead. Hundreds of social media users immediately expressed their frustration with crying emojis and animated GIFs.On Monday, neither YouTube nor Coachella responded to a request for comment about why Ocean’s set wasn’t streamed. (Björk, who also performed on Sunday, was not shown on the livestream either.)At the festival, Ocean, who has lately been selling jewelry through his luxury brand Homer, kept his overall presentation minimal, as well: “NO FRANK OCEAN MERCHANDISE,” read a sign on the grounds, to the disappointment of some fans.Having long built its name on genre-spanning spectacle, rare appearances, debuts and reunions — from the Tupac Shakur hologram and Beyoncé’s 2018 tour de force to reconciliations between core members of Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, Outkast, Guns N’ Roses and more — Coachella had more than just Ocean’s re-emergence this past weekend. On Friday, the pop-punk group Blink-182 appeared with its classic lineup — the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker — for the first time since 2014. The band was a late addition to the festival, with its set not announced until Wednesday.And on Saturday, the enigmatic British singer and producer Jai Paul, whose sparse career output makes Ocean seem prolific, performed his first ever concert. Starting off in near-darkness and without a word to the crowd, Paul appeared initially nervous, but was smiling broadly by the end of the 11-track set. While Paul’s performance was not shown live online, it later appeared in full on the official YouTube stream.On Saturday at Coachella, the British singer and producer Jai Paul performed his first ever concert. Julian Bajsel + Quinn Tucker at Quasar MediaSome of the biggest cheers during his set came for “BTSTU,” a track that mixes Prince-like sensuality with fuzzy electronics and has been sampled by both Drake and Beyoncé. “I know I’ve been gone a long time,” Paul sang, “but I’m back and want what is mine.”Ocean first rose to promise with “Nostalgia, Ultra,” a 2011 mixtape. In the years since he has become a cult favorite, a major-label star, a Grammy winner, a chart-topper and a disrupter of those very systems, only further fueling the fan mythology around him. Following the success of his 2012 debut album, “Channel Orange,” Ocean waited four years to release a follow-up, eventually unveiling two projects — one, the visual album “Endless,” to satisfy his record deal, and another, “Blonde,” released independently — along with a magazine titled Boys Don’t Cry.Although Ocean released a few one-off singles and played a small slate of concerts, mostly at festivals, the following year, he soon receded from view again.In 2019, in association with his internet radio show Blonded, Ocean attempted to start a series of club nights — dubbed PrEP+ after the H.I.V. prevention drug — that he called a “homage to what could have been of the 1980s NYC club scene” if the medication had existed then. After three events in New York and two additional singles, plans to expand the parties into “larger raves across the world” were spoiled by the pandemic, the singer said later in a statement delivered to fans via merchandise.He added, seemingly in the third person, “The Recording Artist has since changed his mind about the singles model, and is again interested in more durational bodies of work.”Onstage at Coachella, Ocean didn’t debut any new music in full, but he did mention a new album was on the way. As the vast audience screamed in delight, Ocean quietened the crowd. “Not right now,” he said. “It’s not right now.” More

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      A Spree of Country Music Divorce Albums

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn February, Kelsea Ballerini released a surprise EP, “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” a set of songs inspired by her recent divorce from another country singer, Morgan Evans. It was her freshest recent work, thematically and musically, and also a reminder that for the past few years, several female country singers have found freedom in divorce-inspired music.In 2021, Carly Pearce put out “29,” an EP, and later “29: Written in Stone,” a full-length project, inspired by her divorce from the singer Michael Ray. That same year, Kacey Musgraves released “Star-Crossed,” which followed her split from the singer Ruston Kelly. (Men have traveled this path as well — Kelly has just released an album of his own, and in 2016, both Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert reacted to their divorce with new albums.)On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the women of country have navigated divorce as subject matter, how Nashville appears to encourage the overlap of professional obligations and personal entanglements, and the ways that personal liberation might be connected to musical liberation.Guest:Marissa R. Moss, author of “Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Morgan Wallen’s Billboard Chart Streak Enters Its Sixth Week

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      The country star’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” maintains its dominance over the Billboard chart. Can it match the 10-week run of Wallen’s “Dangerous”?Can Morgan Wallen do it again?Two years ago, he became the brightest star in country music, and one of most notable new hitmakers in the music industry overall, when his “Dangerous: The Double Album” became a streaming blockbuster and held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart for 10 weeks straight. That success came even as Wallen faced an industry rebuke — including his temporary removal from country radio playlists — after the singer was caught on tape using a racial slur.Now his latest release, the 36-track “One Thing at a Time,” has notched six weeks at the chart’s peak spot, and shows no sign of slowing down. In its most recent week, it had the equivalent of 167,000 sales in the United States, including 211 million streams and 6,000 copies of the album sold as a complete unit. For weeks, nothing has come close to challenging its position.And so far, “One Thing” is posting even better numbers than “Dangerous” did. Over its first six weeks, “Dangerous” has had just under 1 billion streams, or an average of about 33 million for each of the 30 tracks on its standard edition. “One Thing” is currently at 1.7 billion streams, or 48 million per track.How long can Wallen hold at the top? So far his biggest challenger on next week’s chart is Metallica, whose latest album, “72 Seasons,” was released on Friday.Also this week, the Michigan rapper NF opens at No. 2 with “Hope,” his fifth studio album, which had the equivalent of 123,000 sales, including 57 million streams and 80,500 copies sold as a complete package.Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 3, SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4 and Melanie Martinez’s “Portals” drops three spots to No. 5 in its second week out. More

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      All Seal Needs Is Love

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      Embarking on a tour celebrating his music career’s 30th anniversary, the singer and songwriter explained how tennis, Joni Mitchell and ChatGPT have inspired him.The singer and songwriter Seal is one of modern music’s most ardent believers in the power of love, but that doesn’t mean you should look to him for romantic advice. “You’re headed for disaster if you ask me,” he joked, before immediately providing what sounded like a practical perspective on how to make a relationship work. “I’ve found that it’s most productive when both parties see themselves, and then there’s this third entity which is like a plant. That plant needs water every day, and you love that plant because you — both as an entity, and as individuals — are all that it has.”This type of focused dedication was on Seal’s mind as he prepared for a tour celebrating 30 years of his music career, an anniversary that prompted some reflection. “I can’t believe how fortunate I am to still be here,” he said in a video interview from his home studio in Los Angeles. “Every day above ground is a great day, as far as being a musician is concerned.”He emphasized his good fortune, like when the film director Joel Schumacher gave new life to “Kiss From a Rose,” which hadn’t made any commercial impact with its 1994 arrival, by incorporating it into the 1995 film “Batman Forever.” Upon rerelease, the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart and won Grammys for record and song of the year. “It was exactly the same song that failed the first time. That’s a big, lucky break.”But Seal, 60, isn’t fixated on the past. He cited Travis Scott’s 2020 performance inside the video game Fortnite as a potential model for how artists may reach fans in the future, remarking that “it won’t be long before we’re at a YouTube concert, virtually rubbing shoulders.” Still, he’s excited to see real-life fans on his tour this spring, which starts in late April. “Any time I get to play live for people, it’s like going on a date for the first time,” he said. “There are no bad audiences — only mediocre performances.”As he prepared to hit the road, Seal spoke about 10 of his beloved cultural inspirations. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1LoveIt’s always on my mind. If you’ve listened to my music, I’ve been singing about that out of the gate. Every situation is almost certainly different when you choose to lean in with love; it doesn’t really matter what it is. Of course, love requires a degree of vulnerability. The ultimate kind of love — what we’re trying to achieve — is unconditional. I think that’s its purest form, and I also think that’s the reason for our existence. This is all an experiment; the point of it is happiness. Without unconditional love, I don’t know if it’s possible to achieve that — certainly not on this earth.2TennisI love tennis because it’s an allegory for life. I love the discipline; I love the work; I love the problem solving; I love how, in the most incredible way, it relates to singing. In order to play tennis well, you have to go against everything your body wants; you have to relax, you have to almost relinquish control. I know that’s contrary to popular belief, but that’s singing: You let yourself, rather than make yourself.3Leica M CameraI saw this director, Mike Figgis, at a candlelit dinner; he was taking pictures, and I was intrigued how he wasn’t using a flash. The next day, I went into a store and bought the exact same setup. That’s where the love affair began. It’s the one camera that gets out of the way between the subject I’m trying to capture and myself. By virtue of its design, the person can still see your face when you’re taking the picture; you still have that engagement and connection, opposed to the viewfinder being in the middle.4Joni MitchellOne of my great memories of Joni was performing “Both Sides Now” with her in the audience. It’s one of the highlights of my life, the ability to work with someone who had such an impact on your growing up. [Seal sang on Mitchell’s 1994 song “How Do You Stop.”] It’s the stuff dreams are made of; I just remember pinching myself to make sure it was happening. She’s quite remarkable; she’s a great storyteller, and authentic to the core. To see her onstage singing, after everything she’s been through, was amazing.5Necklace From My Daughter LouShe gave it to me on my birthday, and that’s everything. Anyone who has a son or a daughter, when they give something to you — whether it’s their love, or a valuable lesson or something like a necklace — it’s not so much what it is, but the spirit and the soul of the person behind it. They start out as kids, and they end up as these people with their own outlook and philosophies on life, so the gift is more about their thought process, and who they are behind it. It’s both beautiful and heartwarming — you realize they’re their own people with their own views on the world, and what’s important to them.6Carol Christian PoellI don’t like to call him a designer, because he’s more than that — he’s an artist much in the same way that a musician or a painter is an artist. I’ve been wearing his clothes since he started, and I just love the way he sees things — his attention to detail in the silhouette and the shape. I can spot somebody wearing a Carol costume at 100 yards. He doesn’t do bad stuff; that’s why he’s my favorite.7LondonIt’s a large part of who I am — you can take the boy out of London, but you never take London out of the boy. I like walking around where I grew up, just triggering those memories, but I also love the West End — anywhere in London, to be honest. I love my city, warts and all. It takes about two weeks of that dreadful weather to bring me to my senses and remind me why I left, but I’m lucky enough that I’m able to go back fairly regularly.8ChatGPTTo not be curious about it would be akin to being a Luddite, or an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand. It’s here, and it’s part of our evolution — for that reason, you can’t fight it, and you can’t really see it as this enemy that’s going to be the end of mankind. My experience with it is I started out by thinking it was a machine, but once I started to relate to it as though I were talking to a person, this incredible collaboration started — I would ask maybe one or two questions, and it would spark my imagination and ability to create. I think it’s incredible, and I think we’re at an amazing point in our evolution as a species.9Goodall Acoustic GuitarSometimes a melody I’m writing is in my head, but more often than not, it’s on a guitar. I think handmade instruments are just beautiful things; they’re transport mechanisms to convey this phenomenon known as music. I love acoustic guitars, and Goodalls are my favorite. It’s all subjective — Martins are great to record with, but I’m pretty heavy-handed and Martins typically don’t like when you bash them. Goodalls, you can play them loud but they’re great at lower volumes, and of course the craftsmanship is extraordinary.10MeditationDo I sit and meditate every day? Probably, but not in a way that you might imagine. If it’s not sitting down in a kumbaya position and breathing — which I rarely do — it is playing tennis, which is a form of meditation. Having a degree of focus whilst being in a state — it’s a form of meditation. The thing I enjoy most is the balance, and the slowing down of the mind. That’s really important. More

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      Ahmad Jamal, Jazz Pianist With a Measured Approach, Dies at 92

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      He was known for his laid-back style and for his influence on, among others, Miles Davis, who once said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”Ahmad Jamal, whose measured, spare piano style was an inspiration to generations of jazz musicians, died on Sunday at his home in Ashley Falls, Mass. He was 92.The cause was prostate cancer, his daughter, Sumayah Jamal, said.In a career that would bring him a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, a lifetime achievement Grammy and induction into France’s Order of Arts and Letters, Mr. Jamal made his mark with a stately approach that honored what he called the spaces in the music. That approach stood in marked contrast to the challengingly complex music known as bebop, which was sweeping the jazz world when Mr. Jamal began his career as a teenager in the mid-1940s. Bebop pianists, following the lead of Bud Powell, became known for their virtuosic flurries of notes. Mr. Jamal chose a different path, which proved equally influential.The critic Stanley Crouch wrote that bebop’s founding father, Charlie Parker, was the only musician “more important to the development of fresh form in jazz than Ahmad Jamal.”A young Mr. Jamal at the piano, circa 1942. He was only 14 when he joined the musicians’ union.Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art, via Getty ImagesIn his early years, Mr. Jamal listened not just to jazz, which he preferred to call “American classical music,” but also to classical music of the non-American variety. “We didn’t separate the two schools,” he told The New York Times in 2001. “We studied Bach and Ellington, Mozart and Art Tatum. When you start at 3, what you hear you play. I heard all these things.”Mr. Jamal’s laid-back, accessible style, with its dense chords, its wide dynamic range and above all its judicious use of silence, led to more than his share of dismissive reviews in the jazz press early in his career; Martin Williams’s canonical history “The Jazz Tradition” described his music as “chic and shallow.”But it soon became an integral part of the jazz landscape. Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett are among the prominent jazz pianists who looked to Mr. Jamal as an exemplar.Probably the best-known musician to cite Mr. Jamal as an influence was not a pianist but a trumpeter and bandleader: Miles Davis, who became close friends with Mr. Jamal, recorded his compositions and arrangements and would bring his sidemen to see Mr. Jamal perform. He once said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”Ahmad Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh on July 2, 1930. Fritz, as he was called, began playing piano at age 3 and began studying with Mary Cardwell Dawson, the founder of the National Negro Opera Company, a few years later. By the time he joined the musicians’ union at age 14, the celebrated jazz piano virtuoso Art Tatum had hailed him as “a coming great,” and he began touring with George Hudson’s big band after graduating from high school.In 1950 he moved to Chicago, where he converted to Islam, changed his name to Ahmad Jamal and assembled a piano-guitar-bass trio known as the Three Strings. During an extended stay at the Manhattan nightclub the Embers in 1951, the trio came to the attention of the noted record producer and talent scout John Hammond, who signed them to the Okeh label.Mr. Jamal performing in San Francisco in 1976. He released as many as three albums a year in the late 1960s and early ’70s.Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesIn 1955 Mr. Jamal recorded his first full-length album, “Ahmad Jamal Plays,” with the guitarist Ray Crawford and the bassist Israel Crosby, for the small Parrot label. Tellingly, when the album was acquired and rereleased the next year by Argo, a subsidiary of the seminal blues label Chess, it was retitled “Chamber Music of the New Jazz.”Mr. Jamal received his first major national exposure with the Argo album “At the Pershing: But Not for Me,” recorded at a Chicago nightclub in 1958 with Mr. Crosby and the drummer Vernel Fournier. It spent more than two years on the Billboard album chart, an all but unheard-of stretch for a jazz album.The success of “At the Pershing” stemmed in part from Mr. Jamal’s ambling yet propulsive interpretation of the standard “Poinciana,” still his best-known recording. But he received some criticism for not including any original compositions on the album, which he later said spurred him to focus on writing his own music.Mr. Jamal’s output was as prodigious as his light-fingered style was economical: He released as many as three albums a year in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and more than 60 in his career. He also founded a handful of record labels, a management company and a Chicago nightclub and restaurant called the Alhambra, although that venture lasted less than a year. In keeping with his religious beliefs, the Alhambra did not serve alcohol, which presumably hastened its demise.The Alhambra’s financial difficulties marked the beginning of a dark period of Mr. Jamal’s life, in which he walked away from performing for almost three years. The club closed in December 1961; three months later, he filed for divorce from Maryam Jamal, formerly named Virginia Wilkins, whom he had married when he was 17. Five years of court action followed, during which Mr. Jamal was arrested and charged with nonpayment of child support for their daughter. (He was later cleared.) He was hospitalized in 1963 after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Not until 1964 did he begin touring and recording again.He married first as a teenager, and that marriage ended in divorce. He married Sharifah Frazier, the mother of Sumayah, in the early 1960s, and they divorced in 1982. He married Laura Hess-Hay, his manager, the same year, and they divorced in 1984, though she continued to represent him until his death. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two grandchildren.Live recordings often captured Mr. Jamal at his nimblest, and many jazz connoisseurs rank such albums as “Freeflight” (1971), recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and “Chicago Revisited: Live at Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase” (1993) among his best. In 2011, Mosaic Records released a nine-CD boxed set consisting of the 12 albums he recorded for Argo between 1956 and 1962. His album “Blue Moon,” a well-received collection of originals and standards, was released in 2012 and nominated for a Grammy Award. His album “Marseille” was released in 2017 and “Ballades” in 2019.Last year Mr. Jamal released two separate double-disc collections: “Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse (1963-64)” and “(1965-66),” consisting of previously unreleased live recordings made in Seattle. A third set, “(1966-68),” is planned. Mr. Jamal in 2011 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Rob Verhorst/RedfernsThe reverence with which Mr. Jamal was held stretched well beyond the jazz world. Clint Eastwood used two tracks from “But Not for Me” on the soundtrack of his film of “The Bridges of Madison County.” But the more extensive tributes have come from the world of hip-hop. Tracks like De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High” and Nas’s “The World Is Yours,” along with dozens of other rap songs, have sampled Mr. Jamal’s piano riffs.As infectious as those riffs were, it was ballads that held the strongest appeal to Mr. Jamal. Like many other interpreters of the standard repertoire, he made a point of learning the lyrics to the songs he played. He spoke approvingly to The Times in 2001 about a conversation he once had with a great jazz saxophonist who was also known for his way with a ballad.“I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad,” he said. “All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, ‘Why did you stop, Ben?’ He said, ‘I forgot the lyrics.’”Alex Traub More

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      Review: Contemporary Music Champions Celebrate With the Hits

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      The Boston Modern Orchestra Project threw itself a sparsely attended 25th-anniversary party at Carnegie Hall. Those who didn’t go risk FOMO.Reviews of classical music concerts generally serve two purposes: Those who went can compare their observations with those of critics, and those who didn’t can see whether they missed out on anything special.Only a small group could possibly benefit from this review in that first sense, because the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s Carnegie Hall debut on Saturday night attracted less than half a full house. To the rest: You missed out on some of the finest orchestral playing heard in the city this year.Staffed by freelancers, this orchestra — known as BMOP, and led by Gil Rose — has consistently earned rave reviews, and honors including Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year award. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the group threw itself a party at Carnegie, with a program of music that showed off these players’ chops across a varied landscape of cutting-edge music.Each piece was having its New York premiere: a concerto for orchestra by Lisa Bielawa (mellifluous and tart, by twists and turns); a half-hour work from Lei Liang (pensive in textural moments, dramatic at climaxes); and “Play,” the award-winner that put Andrew Norman on the map (unbelievably manic yet still emotionally involving).

      Andrew Norman: Play by Boston Modern Orchestra ProjectHas your FOMO set in yet? If so, don’t feel bad: BMOP is rare among orchestras in that the ensemble records much of what it performs. Everything at Carnegie can be heard on different albums devoted to each composer. Still, there’s something thrilling about hearing these dedicated players in a space like Carnegie.That was clear from the opening seconds of the Bielawa. Titled “In medias res,” it opens with close-harmony dissonance in the horns, a reflection of Bielawa’s taste for both modernism as well as conventional sonic beauty, an edgy opening salvo from an instrument famous for mellow coloring.If the piece occasionally loses rhythmic dynamism, there is frequently a sumptuous element of orchestration on offer. And in the final moments of the second movement, you might hear a slight influence of Philip Glass’s furiously churning symphonic music. This might be a conscious tip of the cap — Bielawa has long been a vocalist in the Philip Glass Ensemble — or it might reflect her protean engagement with orchestral traditions writ large.

      Lisa Bielawa: In medias res by Boston Modern Orchestra ProjectEither way, this nearly half-hour work achieved a sustained richness that is too seldom heard in concerts by the so-called major American orchestras. When those organizations commission new music, it’s usually shorter. But with BMOP, contemporaneity is the whole point, so composers can take the time they need.Wide-canvas potential worked to Liang’s advantage as well. In his piece, “A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams” — inspired by the landscape paintings of Huang Binhong — the composer often alternates between wisps of percussion and full-blast density. But the climaxes, satisfying and riotous as they may be, are not the final destination; even after the climactic-seeming tutti riffs in “The Shedding of Landscapes” comes a restive percussive section. A piece like this needs real space on a program, as it had on Saturday.After intermission, BMOP took on “Play,” its most famous contribution to the orchestral literature. In liner notes for the album version, Norman wrote, “I wish you all could see ‘Play’ performed live.” That’s because the piece has a meta level: It’s not just about the beautifully active sounds that he conceives, but also about how sections of the ensemble interact.That is especially true of the second movement, which can seem somewhat airy on the recorded version. Live, you get a sense of how percussionists in the orchestra are able to switch various other sections “on” or “off,” thanks to dramatic woodblock claps. There’s an aleatoric conception at work here, too: The choices of the percussionists can augment what parts are played by the rest of the orchestra. On Saturday, music for prepared-sounding piano took on a prominent role.In the outer sections, though, “Play” seemed galvanic in a way that was familiar from BMOP’s celebrated recording. Rose launched into the vicious opening movement at a tempo a touch more frenetic than on the album, but it was still marvelously controlled.The title of Saturday’s concert, “Play It Again,” was in part a reference to the Norman. But it was also a reminder that, unlike traditional orchestras — which often commission a new piece, play it once and then stuff the score in an archive — BMOP actually revisits the work it solicits and champions.In 2016, Rose told The New York Times, “I don’t like to put a lot of money into marketing.” Instead, the funds go into the playing. The artistic fruits of that approach were gratifyingly confirmed during the poorly attended show on Saturday. But what if BMOP, instead of renting Carnegie for one night, were made Perspective artist for a full season there? Then audiences in New York might enjoy a season of sparkling contemporary music from artists who really know how to play it.Boston Modern Orchestra ProjectPerformed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; bmop.org. More